Wednesday, December 07, 2011

New Book: Photography and Archaeology

Reaktion Books

Not exactly Egyptology, but potentially of some interest to some readers.

Photography and Archaeology
Frederick N. Bohrer

Through photographs we preserve the past, and looking for the past is the very job of the archaeologist. But what are we looking at in an archaeological photograph? Archaeological photography is often largely deserted, to be scanned with a forensic gaze, towards finding evidence of what once took place. At the same time, photographs of excavated sites and artefacts have revealed stunning ancient works, shot as works of art. In Photography and Archaeology, Frederick Bohrer examines some of history’s most famous archaeological excavations, as well as lesser-known and previously unpublished finds, from the Mediterranean, Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas, and the ways these sites have been represented in photographs. Bohrer shows how the development of photography in the nineteenth century made archaeology available to a much wider audience, and he discusses how these images revealed the material traces of the past, as well as their meaning and use today.

Frederick N. Bohrer is Professor of Art at Hood College, Frederick, Maryland, and author of Orientalism and Visual Culture: Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-century Europe (2003)

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